Okay, your posting is full of errors here. If you care to see why, please read on. Otherwise, I would advise not posting on the subject until you learn more about glow discharges ...
The Sun being externally powered would be easily observable from Earth. In fact, we would see similar inflow of energy into our atmosphere, dramatically heating up the surface of the Earth and by our space probes. We would observe the plasma flowing in onto the Sun. The fact is we don't observe these effects. Hence, we can discard that prediction of the theory, assuming someone ever gets bold enough to make it.
To your own credit, you have actually read more than most. The problem is that you're listening to the likes of Tom Bridgman and Leroy Ellenberger, who collectively know absolutely nothing about plasma physics.
A typical quote from Leroy Ellenberger goes something like this:
"The REAL point is that I do not have to pick one issue when the entire EU model is based on Juergens' uncorrected misunderstandings of science and physics, and the model is falsified by many observations, including the presence of convection in the photosphere and absence of x-rays in coronal holes."
Let's dissect in detail why this is wrong. First of all, Wal Thornhill's and Don Scott's "Electric Sun" hypothesis was originally inspired by Ralph Juergens, but later amended by Wal (as evident in the chapter on the Sun in the book, The Electric Universe). Don Scott added further scientific perspective, in his book, The Electric Sky.
Leroy's all too typical statement above, about "Juergens' uncorrected misunderstandings of science and physics," fails to touch the real issue at all. The question is: in what way did Wal amend Juergens' model?
Much of what follows is based on a page on Wal's Holoscience website:
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=uf4ty065
In a paper published in 1982, Juergens wrote:
"Transmission lines carrying high-voltage direct current - electric trolley wires, for example - discharge almost continuously to the surrounding air. In the case of a positive (anode) wire electrons ever present in the Earth's atmosphere drift toward the wire, attracted by its positive charge. As they penetrate the increasingly intense electric field close to the wire, the electrons gain energy from the field and are accelerated to energies great enough to initiate electron avalanches as they collide with and ionize air molecules. The avalanching electrons, in turn, intensify the ionization immediately surrounding the wire. Positive ions, formed in the process, drift away from the wire in the electric field. In this way, a more or less steady discharge is maintained, although there is no tangible object other than the surrounding air that can be considered a cathode."
Electric Discharge As The Source Of Solar Radiant Energy, KRONOS Vol 8 No. 1, Fall 1982.
In the second instalment (KRONOS Vol 8 No. 2.), Juergens amplified his supposition about the region of the anode function in an electric sun:
"the postulated discharge â" though focused on a central solar anode - would appear to embrace a vast region of space, most of it devoted to cathode mechanisms. The solar corona, and its extension through interplanetary space and beyond, finds an analog in the "negative glow" region of a glow discharge. The chromosphere we shall interpret as the inner limit of this negative glow. Only the photosphere, at the inner limit of the vast discharge cavity, will be assigned an anode function in this model."
After giving these citations, Wal presents an illustration of his revision, based on the classical study of glow discharge published in J.D Cobine's book Gaseous Conductors.
Wal's own caption to the illustration reads:
Diagram showing the important features of a glow discharge. Note that in a spherically symmetrical corona discharge the cathode glows are absent because the energy is spread through a huge volume. On the other hand the anode, because of its small size relative to the entire heliosphere, is likely to be stressed and exhibit complex discharge phenomena to relieve that stress. The Sun exhibits the features of a stressed anode. Top diagram from J. D. Cobine, Gaseous Conductors, p. 213.
And here is Wal's punchline:
The 'negative glow' region can be seen to have a strong electric field. People objected to Juergens'' model because we don''t find relativistic electrons, accelerated by a strong radial field in interplanetary space, rushing toward the Sun. But plasma phenomena in a glow discharge are complex, so appeals to simplistic models based on electrostatics are irrelevant. Instead, I propose that Juergens' model BE MODIFIED [emphasis mine] and that interplanetary space is the extensive 'positive column' region of a glow discharge. Cobine writes, "The positive column is a region of almost equal concentrations of positive ions and electrons and is characterized by a very low voltage gradient."
In Wal's model, then, the planets orbit within the positive column of the Sun's discharge, which reaches to the Sun's outer boundary or plasmasphere, the double layer of the "heliosphere." The heliosphere is the virtual cathode. The vast plasma domain within the heliosphere will be quasi-neutral, which is the nature of the positive column of a glow discharge. It will have a "VERY LOW VOLTAGE GRADIENT" (Cobine's words). The plasma medium provided by the solar wind is not "neutralizing" the Sun through an electrostatic discharge, it is a conducting medium allowing for the completion of solar system circuitry.
Unlike electrostatic discharge, the glow discharge thus maintains a weak but constant radial electric field--i.e., it is not diminishing with distance squared (electrostatic behavior). Electrons drift toward the Sun under the influence of this radial field, which is also responsible for the acceleration of protons away from the Sun, with the most energetic events occurring extremely close to the Sun.
Since Leroy is still imagining the Juergens model, he understands none of this. If he did, he wouldn't be endlessly repeating his mantra about the "absence of x-rays in coronal holes," which one might look for if the Sun were subjected to a blizzard of electrons accelerated to relativistic velocities by a STRONG electric field within the heliosphere. As Wal puts it:
"So looking for excess relativistic electrons rushing toward the Sun is no more sensible than looking at a current-carrying wire and asking where are all the excess electrons rushing from one end of the wire to the other."
On the applicability of the glow discharge, you can find the details you need in Cobine, beginning on pages 214 and 215, with the diagram on page 213.
"..if the electrodes are placed in a very large vessel instead of in a tube the positive column disappears and the current is carried
throughout the entire volume by a relatively low density of ionization." This is precisely the situation in interplanetary space where we have the thin plasma of the solar wind.
"The positive column is a region of almost equal concentrations of positive ions and electrons and is characterized by a very low voltage gradient."
On page 233:
"..the conductance of the [positive] column is maintained by relatively slow electrons." This is what is meant by a
"drift" current in interplanetary space. The drift is superimposed on the electrons' much higher thermal (random) velocities. "The
[positive] column is a typical plasma having equal concentrations of positive ions and of electrons, each with its own maxwellian velocity
distribution and characteristic temperature.. The temperature of the positive ions is higher than the gas temperature, and the electron temperature is very high."
Page 248:
"The boundary of this anode glow is a double-layer sheath.." The double layer is where electrons are suddenly accelerated toward the Sun and protons accelerated away from the Sun in the form of the solar wind. EXTREMELY INTERESTING: "A certain amount of heat is given to the anode by the discharge.. most of this heat comes from the electrons that bombard the surface of the anode."
In Cobine, you'll also find pages of mathematical analysis and experimental results accompanying the few snippets noted here.
Analogies are always limited in their applicability, but in envisioning a drift current I've used the analogy of a house with a 650 cfm fan at one end of it in a room window. If all of the other windows are closed in the house except for one on the opposite side, do you think that you'll necessarily feel the flow of air rushing past you in the middle of the house? Or, more likely, will local turbulent flows make that difficult? It's the same situation with drift currents.
In space, at earth's distance from the Sun, perhaps the net electron drift comes to INCHES per hour. That's a long way from relativistic velocities.
In space, one would have to stretch a mighty long wire to measure a voltage differential. But of course, across the immense volume of space within the heliosphere, an immeasurably weak potential across short distances would translate into immense potential within the Sun's plasma domain, a potential sufficient to power the Sun. The volume of the heliosphere is unimaginably huge. Tom Van Flandern points out that you could fit all the 200 billion stars in the galaxy inside Pluto's orbit. The heliosphere is more than 8 times larger. That's a lot of room for storing electric potential! The fact that the potential may not be obvious cannot obscure the fact that all of the defining attributes of the Sun DO present the predictable features of a glow discharge.
The best means of identifying electric field strength is surely to observe the acceleration of charged particles, most of which occurs extremely close to the Sun, as the electric model would predict. The best measure of electric currents, in turn, will be the magnetic fields that necessarily result.
Understanding a drift current and glow discharge requires one to abandon electrostatic discharge concepts once and for all--an inescapable fact that eliminates virtually all of the "refutations" of the Electric Sun hypothesis ever cited by Leroy.
And lastly, let me repeat the admonition to mathematicians tempted to shoot first (with irrelevant electrostatic analyses) and ask questions later. By definition, these analyses overlook the proven behavior of electrified plasma, the obvious underlying condition assumed by the Electric Sun hypothesis.
Equations used to predict plasma behavior must successfully predict: plasma filamentation, Birkeland Currents and associated magnetic fields, cellular structures (Langmuir sheaths) around charged bodies in plasma, relatively strong electric fields across the boundaries or "double layers" of the sheaths, weak or quasi neutral fields between an outer sheath and a sheath close to the surface of the charged object, a very strong electric field across the latter sheath, and the inherently "chaotic" nature of plasma instabilities--all documented in plasma laboratory experiments and more recently in 3-dimensional supercomputer simulations. When plasma cosmologists and Electric Universe theorists tear their hair over gross calculations of electrostatic forces, they are simply responding in frustration to a misunderstanding all too common amongst astrophysicists and astronomers.
In an electrostatic analysis, the charged object would simply be neutralized. That's because the analysis will ignore the contribution of electric circuits. It will not take into account the currents snaking along the galactic arms (as Alfvén himself observed), or the plasma z-pinch associated with the currents from which, in the electric model, the stars themselves are born. Nor will it take into account the so-called "open" magnetic field lines converging on the Sun. In the electric model these are not "OPEN" [an impossibility] but simply the pathways of the field-aligned galactic currents that the model REQUIRES.
You go on ...
Also the "electric sun" model doesn't explain the extraordinary amount of energy coming from the Sun
The glow discharge model explains all of the most important features of the Sun. This is very important when building a model.
Actually, mass is better defined within the Electric Universe than in the standard paradigm. You guys haven't even locked onto a useful meaning for the word "mass" yet.
, presence of fusion products in the Sun's photosphere
Fusion occurs where it is noticed to occur -- at the top of the photosphere. We see the neutrino flux correlate with sunspot activity. This doesn't make any sense with regards to the Standard Model, which posits a 150,000 year gap between the generation of neutrinos and activities we observe on the Sun's surface.
(nor any elements heavier than helium in the Solar System)
Fusion is postulated to occur just the same in the Electric Sun hypothesis. It just doesn't occur in the Sun's interior.
, and doesn't explain the neutrino influx.
Counting neutrinos has traditionally been a nasty problem for the Standard Model. It's not something that you guys should brag about.
It doesn't explain why Jupiter doesn't look like the Sun.
Jupiter is not the anode in the heliosphere's glow discharge.
We get the usual dog and pony show about plasmas, Birkeland currents, etc. It's junk. Obviously there are some complex EM phenomena going on, but that isn't the power source for the Sun.
If you say so!